Consider a customer who would like to purchase goods or services. For example, consider a customer who would like to purchase and configure a new domain name for a business server. Without successful initial and on-going attention to these tasks, various services such as email, mobility, and web services may not function.
Often, the small business turns to a technical consultant to purchase and configure the Internet presence from third party vendors. The resulting services do not always meet the small business's needs and the small business may overpay for unnecessary services.
Consider a small business that wants to purchase a new domain name. Suppose the small business is in the entertainment industry, and would prefer to purchase a .tv domain name. Like many small businesses, let us also assume that this small business has an internet protocol (IP) address dynamically assigned by the domain name server (DNS) provider. For this small business to obtain a working Internet presence, the small business must locate a domain name, a dynamic DNS vendor, and an Internet connectivity vendor who can provide the desired bandwidth at the location of the small business' server. The small business may find that one vendor can provide all of these services or that multiple vendors are required to meet these needs.
Once one or more vendors are located, the business owner narrows down the services he needs to buy from the one or more vendors. This can be challenging since vendors offer a wide variety of services such as various top-level-domains and country codes, various bandwidths, and various DNS services, and many of these services are communicated by vendors at the level of understanding of a technical consultant.
After the business owner selects vendors and services, the business owner must properly configure the DNS server with the purchased domain registration so multiple DNS records point to the small business server. Finally, the small business monitors the on-going status of the configured Internet presence and monitors renewal of the purchased services. Maintaining an Internet presence is technically difficult and time consuming and requires initial and on-going configuration.
In another example, consider a customer who wants to purchase goods or services over the Internet that require specific technical decisions or knowledge about a customer's computing environment. Existing Internet browsing proceeds by searching and reviewing search results. The browsing experience proceeds link by link, focused by explicit user search terms intended to identify goods and services that a customer desires. Often, purchasing halts when a customer has limited time or when a customer encounters a difficult technical question about their computing environment.